Psychiatry for Children and Families Navigating Divorce in Boston
When a family restructures, children need someone to think with — not just someone to talk to.
Board-certified child and adult psychiatrists with psychodynamic and psychoanalytic training
Children and parents treated in relation to each other — not in separate silos
Individual child therapy, parent guidance, and couples consultation coordinated under one roof
Private-pay: no insurance-driven session limits, no fragmented split models
In-person in Boston’s Back Bay and telehealth for Massachusetts-based patients
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Request a consultation:
Submit the form or call.
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Office manager call:
We review basic clinic information and fit.
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Brief clinician screening (10–15 minutes):
Then our office manager books your first appointment.
Private-pay care enables time, continuity, and depth, with fees discussed during the office manager call.
Located in Back Bay and serving Beacon Hill, Brookline, Cambridge, Somerville, Newton, and surrounding areas. Telehealth is available for established patients in Massachusetts, and for new patients where in-person care is not accessible.
Appointments are often available within a week.
We think developmentally — a seven-year-old’s distress and a fifteen-year-old’s withdrawal require different clinical lenses
We hold the whole family in mind, even when we are meeting with one person
Parental conflict does not stop affecting children just because parents separate
We support the adults so they can support their children — without treating parents as obstacles
Medication is available when clinically indicated, embedded in an ongoing therapeutic relationship
Children Carry What They Cannot Say
Children show distress somatically, behaviorally, and through regression before they can articulate it. Stomachaches before school. A sudden return to younger speech. A teenager’s silence that looks like ordinary adolescence but runs several layers deeper.
Clinical work with children requires reading these signals rather than waiting for a child to name what is wrong.
Many children also feel responsible for the adults around them and have learned, quickly, not to add to what parents are already carrying. The presenting symptom is often the surface of something the child has been holding for months.
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The parental relationship continues to shape children after separation
Marital conflict routes through children in predictable ways: loyalty binds, parentification, exposure to adult grievances, inconsistent parenting across two households, triangulation. The legal structure of divorce does not dissolve these dynamics. Children need a clinician who understands both — the child’s inner world and the systemic pressures that are actively shaping it. When those pressures are named and held clinically, the child no longer has to hold them alone.
Parent work is child work
Supporting a divorcing parent — containing their anxiety, helping them hold their child’s experience separately from their own, reducing the ambient conflict the child is absorbing — is often the most direct intervention we can make on behalf of the child. Separate parent guidance appointments are a standard part of how we structure care. When appropriate and with consent, we coordinate between clinicians across the family system to ensure the treatment does not replicate the split.
Who We Work With
Children and adolescents showing behavioral or emotional changes.
Children who have developed anxiety, sadness, anger, regression, school refusal, or withdrawal during or following a family separation. Referrals come from pediatricians, school counselors, and attorneys observing distress in a child.
Parents seeking guidance on how to support their children.
Parents who want clinical help navigating how to talk to their children about divorce, manage their own responses in front of the children, and recognize when what they are seeing requires professional attention. Parent guidance is available independently of any treatment the child may be receiving.
Families navigating high-conflict separation.
Families in which ongoing parental conflict — litigation, custody disputes, communication breakdowns — is actively affecting the children. We work with the willing parent and child even when the other parent is not engaged, and we do not require both parents’ participation to begin.
Court-involved families needing clinical documentation.
We are clinicians, not forensic evaluators. We do not conduct custody evaluations or serve as expert witnesses. If children sense that their care at Webster Clinic will determine who they will remain with and who they will leave, our clinical work is ineffective. We can however describe a child’s presentation and course of treatment for all parents.
What we help with
Anxiety, sadness, anger, and shame in children responding to family change
Adolescent withdrawal, academic decline, and risk-taking behavior
Loyalty conflicts and parentification
Somatic complaints and school refusal
Sleep disruption and increased clinginess
Parent guidance: how to talk to children about separation at different developmental stages
Co-parenting consultation: reducing conflict and improving coordination between households
Children’s adjustment to new living arrangements, stepparents, and blended families
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Marcus’s teacher noticed first. He had begun eating lunch alone and complaining of stomachaches two or three mornings a week — always on school days, never on weekends. His pediatrician found nothing. His mother, who had separated from his father six months earlier, had tried everything she could think of. In our first meeting, Marcus drew pictures and said very little. What he drew told a different story: a house divided down the middle, a small figure standing in the center of it.
Over several months of weekly sessions, his play and his words began to connect. The stomachaches had a meaning — they were the body’s way of carrying something his seven-year-old mind could not yet put into language. What Marcus needed was not reassurance that everything would be fine. He knew it wasn’t, and he was already old enough to know when adults were managing him. What he needed was someone who could hold his reality without asking him to protect either parent from it. (*Fictionalized vignette)
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Priya came in at seventeen, referred by her school counselor after her grades dropped for the first time in her academic life. She was articulate, insightful, and exhausted. Her parents had separated two years earlier and had not spoken civilly since. She had become, by gradual necessity, the communication channel between them — relaying logistics, managing her mother’s anxiety, shielding her father from her mother’s grievances. She knew more about the legal proceedings than most adults would want to carry.
In treatment, the first task was not to process the divorce. It was to give Priya back the developmental permission to be seventeen. That meant identifying, carefully and without blaming either parent, how she had been recruited into the adult system — and helping her begin to disentangle. The grades followed. (*Fictionalized vignette)
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Elena came alone. Her children — eight and eleven — had not been seen by anyone, but her pediatrician had suggested she speak with someone about what to watch for. Her divorce had been filed three weeks earlier. She was frightened of saying the wrong thing, of introducing the children to the lawyer’s world, of what the next year would look like for all of them.
We spent the first several sessions on her: what she was carrying, what she was projecting onto her children, and what her children were actually showing her. By the time she brought her older child in for an evaluation, she had a different frame — less her own fear, more her child’s. That internal shift made the child work possible in a way it had not been before. Parent work is often where child treatment begins. (*Fictionalized vignette)
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![A woman with long dark hair, wearing a purple dress, smiling and sitting on an olive green armchair in a room with a bookshelf and a potted plant in the background.]()
Christine Crawford MD MPH
Child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist
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![A woman sitting in a green armchair with a bookshelf behind her, smiling at the camera.]()
Jacqueline Buchanan MD
Child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist
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Cecil R Webster Jr MD
FOUNDER & CEO
Child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist
Psychoanalyst
FAQs
Do you work with children separately from parents, or together?
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Both. We typically begin with a parent meeting to understand the family history and presenting concerns, followed by individual sessions with the child. Parent guidance — either separate from or coordinated with the child’s treatment — is part of most cases. The structure is tailored to the family rather than applied uniformly.
What is “parent guidance” and how is it different from therapy for me?
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Parent guidance focuses specifically on your role as a parent in the context of your child’s treatment. The primary focus is on understanding your child’s experience and helping you respond to it. It is distinct from individual therapy for adults, though the two can co-exist when a parent also wants their own clinical support. We are clear from the outset about which frame we are working in.
What if my co-parent is unwilling to participate?
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A significant portion of the children we see come from situations where one parent is resistant, uninvolved, or actively in conflict with the other. We can still do meaningful work with the willing parent and with the child. We do not require participation from both parents to begin, but we need each parent with legal custody to consent to treatment of their child. The vast majority of time, even parents in high conflict agree to have their children be seen by our clinicians at Webster Clinic.
How do you handle it when parents disagree about whether a child needs treatment?
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This is common. We often speak separately with both parents — including parents in active conflict — to understand each perspective and to help them arrive at a shared understanding of the child’s needs. We are not advocates for either parent. Our clinical obligation is to the child.
At what age do you begin working with children?
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We generally work with children from around age five and through emerging adulthood. Younger children require a more play-based, parent-anchored approach; adolescents require a different kind of clinical alliance. We are experienced across the full developmental range and calibrate the approach accordingly. For families with children under five, we work primarily in a parent guidance frame.
Can you provide documentation for a custody evaluation or legal proceeding?
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We are clinicians, not forensic evaluators. Our work is therapeutic, not court-appointed. We can, however, provide clinical documentation — a letter describing a child’s presentation and treatment — to all parents and when it is consistent with the child’s clinical interests. We do not serve as expert witnesses or conduct forensic custody evaluations but can make referrals to those professionals if needed.
Why choose a board-certified psychiatrist instead of a psychiatric nurse practitioner?
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Both can be helpful, but a board-certified psychiatrist (MD/DO) brings full medical training and specialty residency, which matters for complex diagnosis, medical differentials, and nuanced long-term prescribing. In addition, all of our psychiatrists are experienced psychotherapists and/or psychoanalysts. We provide ample depth and breadth to treat your condition. Our model keeps prescribing embedded in an ongoing therapeutic relationship, not a protocol-only visit.
What does private-pay enable clinically?
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Private-pay care protects time, continuity, and depth. It allows longer, unhurried evaluations, steadier follow-up, and treatment guided by clinical need rather than insurance-driven visit limits, diagnosis requirements, or fragmented “split” models of care.
How quickly can I be seen?
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Appointments are often available within a week.
Yes. We offer in-person care in our comfortable Back Bay office and periodic telehealth for established patients. While we are located in Back Bay we also serve Beacon Hill, Brookline, Cambridge, Somerville, Newton, and surrounding areas.